New Look Final

Last night I navigated around the settings and layout sections of blogger enough to figure out how to customize the heading with a photo. The one I chose was taken about a year and a half ago when our good friends Richard and Cindy Fancher came for a visit.

One of the things we did was to go down to the Monterrey Peninsula. While there we toured the 17-Mile Scenic Drive that winds around through Pacific Grove and Pebble Beach. It was windy but beautiful that day.

Think I'll leave this one in place for a while. :-)

Graduation Season

School is winding down out west. In some parts of the country and school at some levels, the graduation speeches are over and the parties have already wound down. Our grads at church still have a couple of weeks, but this Sunday is our time to recognize, honor, and encourage them. It's a worthwhile effort each and every year. Mike, one of last year's grads, left today for a summer internship in Tuba City Arizona. He'll help Paul Ghee coordinate all the mission trip groups, projects, etc for the summer. Lots of us are really proud of Mike.

Virginia will be traveling this weekend to participate in nephew Tim Johnston's church graduation event at the Riverside Church in Coppell, TX. Janet sent a bunch of pics from Tim's life, and Virginia has done her usual masterful job of blending photos, music, and special effects into a story on DVD. She'll also get to see other family, so she's really looking forward to the trip. Thank goodness for those SW Rapid Reward tickets! I'll miss her, but she'll be back Monday.

Achilles Update

Well, almost a week with the cast off now, and my recovery seems to be on schedule. I've been up and about on it more the last few days, so there has been some ankle puffiness. My doc told me to get some knee-high support socks to wear, and that is helping. While putting it on, I have to admit I thought of my mother-in-law.

My mom has reminded me that this healing may go slowly... that I'm not as young as I used to be... that I should be patient. She's right, and it got me thinking about aging... something that happens to each one of us... at least to some point. Recently someone told me, "Getting old isn't for sissies." Most of us can probably identify with that. Yet, I wonder just what's so different about getting older today than it's always been. Hmmm...

Here's a quote from Groucho Marx that may be the final word, "Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough."

Cast Away

Well, my appointment at Kaiser went well. As soon as we checked in at the Ortho reception desk they called me into the cast room and cut my cast away. After a quick look they removed my stitches and Dr Hamilton came in and looked at how my Achilles is healing. He said things look good... progressing as expected.

Next they fitted me with the stylish shoe displayed below... doc H called it a Kaiser-Air shoe. Because my Achilles is understandably sore and my entire foot is stiff (termed cast disease), my first few steps were pretty painful. I was told to continue to use my comfort sticks (crutches) and gingerly increase walking my foot allows it. They told me that pain should be my guide... pushing up to but not through the pain as I increase walking. They also gave me one of those big rubber bands to use for strengthening and stretching.


The ortho shoe has a heel lift added. After a week I'll remove the lift, and after one more week I'll move to a running shoe. June 26 I have a follow-up appointment to see how I'm progressing.

My plan is to follow the doc's orders and get this thing healed.

Revolving Templates

Well, after a few days with the new look, I decided to go with a simpler, cleaner look for now. Maybe it'll grow on me. :-)

Tomorrow I go in to get the cast off and see what the next steps are... looking forward to the appointment and next steps.

A Time to Graduate

Depending on location and whether it's high school or college, it's likely than many of us are close to someone who has graduated or will graduate this spring. I ran across some quotes from graduation speeches and thought I'd share some of my favorites.

How will your experience pave the way for a new voice in America? I hope it will take you out these doors, out into the open air. You will breathe it in your lungs and say, "From now on, this life will be what I stand for... Move over--this is my story now."

Jodie Foster, University of Pennsylvania, 2006

I was a loser in high school. With grades, with girls, with sports... I was a geek, a dweeb, a dork, a tool. I still am, but for a cartoonist, that's a job description. And I'm here to tell my fellow dweebs and losers that your day will come. High school is not the final word on you. There is hope.

Doug Marlette, Durham Academy, 2005

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College, 2005

A God Sunday

I was able to make it to church Sunday, teach my class and lead worship. Everyone treated me well, and it was a joy to be with everyone to worship. The potential was in place for a rough day: I'd not been in the office all week... praise team did not rehearse this week... we had one last minute praise team change because of illness... and Brice was out with a nasty bout with stomach flu.

However, as He so often does, God took charge, allowing us to glorify Him in spite of circumstances, illness, and short-comings. It was actually a pretty incredible morning... and I didn't fall off my crutches even one time.

Power Outage

Yesterday afternoon between 4:30 and 5:00 our power went out. Two summers ago there were outages several times throughout Antioch during a long heat wave. We lost power once I think. Most of those were caused by transformers overheating and blowing. Temps that summer ranged up to 115 here.

Sometime this spring our power was out for part of a Tuesday evening... don't know what caused it, but it was out for two or three hours.

Yesterday the outage was caused by a blown transformer underground between our house and our neighbor's. Only 17 homes were without power. They had to replace the transformer, and it must have been a tough job because the power wasn't restored until about 12:15. However, things are running now, and the house is cool. Hope you are too!

New Look

I've used the same template for this blog since day one. Obviously, I liked the design, but I decided it was time for a different look, so I picked this one. I think I like it, but I'll take recommendations.

Also, as of this spring the Leung house has a new look as well... gates in several places throughout the house. Claire, even with her unique crawling style, can get where she's not supposed to be way too quick, and she'll be walking soon. We helped install the one above when we were there last month.

Personally, I plan to break out a "new look" at church tomorrow. Because of the cast on my leg, I really can't wear long pants, so I've been giving some thought as to what to wear.

I thought about somthing like this...

... but I checked and my kilt must be at the cleaners...

... so I decided to go with your basic cargo shorts and a polo... maybe something like this.

Now... what about a shoe for my left foot... hmmm...

Heating Up

We're in a brief but rather intense heat wave, over 100 today in many Bay Area locations, including Antioch at 103. A few record for this date were broken. It was hot yesterday as well, however, the sea breeze is already beginning to kick in a little, providing a cooler forecast for SF tomorrow. By Sunday afternoon the high pressure will have moved far enough east to bring some cooler temps to us as well, but not as cool as SF.

It will be a hot time for the Sugar Grove praise team down south as well. They've hired Jeremy to help them with a new CD and flew in this weekend for a marathon recording session. We thought about joining he festivities, but I'm not quite mobile enough yet for that big a trip. I'm sure they'll do fine without us there to cheer them on, but it would have been fun.

I did get out for a while this afternoon with my chauffeur... VJ. I did well enough that I'm looking forward to being with my church family Sunday.

To close I'll share a pic of Kaleb working on a recent research project for school. I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't doing research projects in the 3rd grade.

One Week

Today I am one week post-op, and things seem to be progressing as they are supposed to. My main problem is that I'm really tired of being a slug... I mean, I enjoy watching movies and reading and working on my laptop, all from my recliner, but enough is enough!! I'm really looking forward to no crutches, using both legs, getting out of the house... those simple pleasures.

I emailed my doc (one of the great things about Kaiser), and he told me I could get out some, work at a desk with my leg in a chair, basically allowing pain to be my guide. That was good news... I think I'll spend at least some time in the office next week.

Today the pain level has diminished another notch... sort of feels like a wound that is healing instead of one that is raw. That bodes well for being both at church Sunday and in the office some next week.

One week from today that cast comes off and a boot goes on... looking forward to that.

Here's one of my new favorite pictures of Claire to close. I just can't believe how expressive she is... and about the cutest thing anywhere!!

Quotable

Edward Fudge posted this quote in his daily GracEmail. I share it just so you can chew on it a while.

"The challenge before us is to avoid trivializing the gospel by reducing it to that which can be mastered by some technique, explained by some formula, captured in some proposition, or embodied in some ideological agenda. The gospel does not tell us how to vote; which political or economic theory to espouse; or what desires, hopes, and views we should have. The Christian faith is surprisingly un-dictatorial, and when it becomes dictatorial, it becomes disappointingly un-Christian." -- John B. Rogers,Jr., "Between Text and Sermon," Interpretation (July 2003), 293.

Random Reading

Being stuck in a recliner with my foot propped up on pillows certainly has its up side... although the upside would be enhanced greatly if March Madness was happening (not a big NBA guy). One of the things about being home is that I'm reading things I might not otherwise read at the office. Some of it is pretty random, and I thought I'd share a couple of things with you.

A University of Michigan study is reported to have revealed that having a husband adds about 7 hours of housework to the typical woman's load, yet having a wife subtracts about 1 hour of housework from the average man's workload. Not sure which school or department conducted this study... sounds like a graduate research project in the school of sociology. Anyway, I'm wondering if that reflects your experience, dear reader? With me on crutches my guess is that Virginia would say, "Only seven?"

The other is just another one of those wordplay things, "How old should a highway be when you tell it it's adopted?"

Think that one through to the end...

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there!!

The Beat Goes On

Well, sitting around with my foot propped up is going OK, but I can see that two weeks of this will probably leave me a bit stir crazy. I'm getting some work done, some reading caught up on, and some movies watched, but there has to be more, right!?!

There's this biblical principle that laughter is good medicine, so I thought I'd share some jokes from the May issue of Reader's Digest... don't start laughing yet.

Interviewing a college applicant, the dean of admissions asks, "If you could have a conversation with someone, living or dead, who would it be?"
The student thinks it over then answers, "The living one." submitted by Dave Gau

Catch you off guard? Let's try this one.

An orangutan in the zoo has two books - the Bible and Darwin's Origin of Species. He's trying to figure out id he's his brother's keeper - or his keeper's brother. submitted by Samuel J. Stannard

Nice play on words, eh? If you liked it, you'll love this one.

A man goes to the doctor complaining about stomach problems. The doctor asks him what he's been eating.
"I only eat pool balls," he says. "Red ones for breakfast, yellow and orange ones for lunch, blue for afternoon snacks, and purple and black for dinner."
"I see the problem," says the doctor. "You're not getting enough greens."

Now that one made me laugh out loud, but I'm a sucker for wordplay. One more... a little different style.

When a lonely frog consults a fortune-teller, he's told not to worry. "You are going to meet a beautiful young girl," she says, "and she will want to know everything about you."
"That's great!" says the excited frog. "When will I meet her?"
"Next semester," says the psychic, "in biology class." submitted by Zhang Wenyl

That's all, folks!!

Maintaining Elevation

No, I'm not taking flying lessons in a cast, but I have tried to keep my foot up today as I sat in the recliner. I've done a little computer work and previewed some DVDs for church. Other than that, it's mostly been just kicking back, reading a little and watching the tube (aka television for those who are of the "high def" only generation) while Virginia takes care of me. :-)

There are several blogs I look at pretty often. This is the text of Mike Cope's blog today; I thought it was too good not to share. Click here to see the post and comments.

A couple weeks ago I visited with a woman from our church whose memory is fading. We sat in her living room, and she mostly listened to the conversation around her.

But four times — four! — in half an hour, she looked at me and told me how much she loved me. It was clear that she’d forgotten that she had just told me that a few minutes before. But, strangely enough, it didn’t matter. Each time it meant something special.

Here’s my question: How do you become a person who, even with a fog descending on the brain, speaks words of love and affirmation? How do you get to the point where those are the words that come out by default.

I know this: Before all this happened, that’s the kind of person she was. I never knew her to scold, frown, or discourage. For the seventeen years I’ve known her she has been a source of refreshment to all around her.

I think I have some work to do.

I think I do too. This post attracted my attention because it's so cool, but mostly because Virginia has always said this is the kind of person she hopes to be when she's "old and infirm." If Mike's right, I'm pretty sure VJ is well on her way.

Home Again

Well, the TOPAZ procedure on my Achilles went really well. We got to the surgery center at 9:45 and made it back home by 4:00. In between they did all the things to get me ready for surgery, rolled me into the operating room, performed the procedure and I woke up in recovery.

I ended up going with a general anesthesia instead of a spinal, so I was out for the surgery and the day went faster for me than for anybody else. We made that choice because the procedure itself takes only about 20-30 minutes and it takes much longer for the spinal to wear off, increasing the recovery time dramatically. Because I have not other health issues, the general is just as safe, so that's what the anesthesiologist recommended and what I chose.

So, here I am with my brand new "cast," really a hard splint that is open on the front side and wrapped with ace-type bandages and tape. Virginia cut my ID bracelets off after the pic, so, no, I'm not keeping them for sentimental reasons.

below is a closer shot of the splint.

Two weeks from today I have a follow-up appointment with Dr Hamilton to take out the stitches, get fitted for a boot and talk about next steps. Thank you for your prayers. This has already been a good experience: from the kindness and professionalism of the Kaiser staff, to the minimal pain, and especially Virginia's loving care. My hope is that the outcome will also be as satisfying. More later...

Achilles Tendon Relief

As many of you who are reading this know, I've been nursing a sore right Achilles tendon for probably two and a half years. About a year ago it got bad enough I had to quit running, relying on my bike and other things for exercise. In September I visited a podiatrist/orthopedic guy who put me on a regimen of ice, stretching and heel lifts to see if it would heal on its own. He also told me about a laser procedure with an instrument called the TOPAZ Microdebrider, saying that if the more conservative treatment didn't work, it would. Well, the prescribed regimen did bring improvement, but it leveled off, not healing fully. As a result, I decided to take advantage of the relatively new laser treatment. Below is part of an article about TOPAZ that explains better than I could. You can read the whole thing here if you want or another article here.

A new medical device called the TOPAZ Microdebrider which can offer a less invasive alternative is being quickly adopted by sports medicine specialists around the country. The technology offers an innovative
advancement in the treatment of tendons and fascia. This procedure is a quick, simple and a minimally invasive alternative to conservative therapy.

How it Works

Debridement, or the surgical removal of unhealthy tissue... TOPAZ is essentially a technology which enables the debridement of soft tissue, such as tendons... applies the controllable properties of oblation. Largely considered the gold standard, coblation technology is now used in more than 10,000 operating rooms and 2 million patients worldwide.

While most radiofrequency-based surgical products, such as lasers and electrosurgical devices, use heat-driven processes to remove or cut tissue, Coblation-based devices operate at a lower temperature, allowing for more precise procedures than would be performed by traditional surgical tools. Instead of exploding tissue structures under high temperatures, Coblation technology gently dissolves target tissue, minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue. In the case of TOPAZ technology, Coblation is being applied specifically for the debridement of soft tissues such as tendons.

Through a small incision about an inch long the TOPAZ
MicroDebrider is applied on and around the affected tendon for 1/2 second duration treatments a quarter inch apart until a grid-like pattern is formed. With every fourth application, the device is inserted deeper into the tendon--approximately 1/4 inch in depth. Small amounts of tissue are removed as a light dose of radiofrequency energy is directed into the tissue. The entire TOPAZ procedure typically takes less than 20 minutes and the patient is ready to leave the clinic once recovered from light anesthesia.

So, that's how it works. Here's what will happen. Thursday morning I'll go in for the procedure and come home with a cast on my right foot... seems reminiscent of when I had a broken ankle at the end of my freshman year of college in the spring of 1969. I'll wear the cast for two weeks and then a "boot" (one of those oh-so-stylish black elastic support shoes) for two to four more weeks. After that the soreness and swelling should be pretty much gone, and it will be all about re-strengthening the area. The most inconvenient part will be that I won't be able to drive for at least two weeks while I'm wearing the cast... and maybe while I'm in the boot as well... we'll see.

I'll post about my progress. If you think about it Thursday morning, send up a prayer in my behalf. Thanks!!

Pepperdine Bible Lectures

Virginia and I joined 15 of our Eastside friends and about 5000 other Christians at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures last week. As usual, it was a wonderful few days... in so many ways. And the weather, as you can see from the pics, was just incredible, enhancing both the experience and the vistas.

As beautiful as the weather was, and as marvelous the classes and lectures were, this annual event is as much about the people as anything else. Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones can be truly special.

Even the food is good. Above people pack the cafeteria, and below Matt Earnhart (of Won By One) gets ready to chow down.

Here are most of our Eastside buddies.

Some even hosted the rest of us for supper one evening. Wasn't that thoughtful!?!

If you've never been, you should consider making the 2009 Pepperdine Bible Lectures a scheduled event on your calendar next year. You'll be glad you did!